Farmers as the earliest stage in supply chain networks are usually weak and have no bargaining power in commodities pricing, because the commodities availability depends on season and has a very high potential for damage before be processed into specific products. So the price of agricultural commodities has a very high risk of fluctuations compared to the price of a finished product. As the fa...

Herbicide efficacy studies reporting corn yields published in the North Central Weed Science Society Research Report were analyzed to calculate average corn yields for treatments either containing atrazine or not containing atrazine. To prevent unequal comparisons, studies and treatments had to meet conservative selection criteria in order to be included in the analysis. Treatments had to contr...

Cakchiquel farmers in Patzún, Guatemala stated that pest populations have increased in corn crops since they abandoned organic fertilization and adopted synthetic fertilizers. Given the dearth of scientific information about the effects of fertilization practices on pests, a controlled experiment was performed to elucidate these interactions. Pests, their natural enemies, and nutritional status...

A model that integrates biophysical simulations in an economic model is used to analyze the impact of climate change on crop production. The biophysical model simulates future plantmanagement-climate relationships and the economic model simulates farmers’ adaptation actions to climate change using a nonlinear programming approach. Beyond the development of average yields, special attention is d...

This paper develops a stochastic model for comparing payments to U.S. corn producers under the U.S. Senate’s Average Crop Revenue Program (ACR) versus payments under the pricebased marketing loan benefit and countercyclical payment programs. Using this model, the paper examines the sensitivity of the density function for payments to changes in expected price levels. We also assess the impact of...

A number of economic and environmental benefits are associated with the use of no-till in production agriculture in the United States. There are lower labor, energy, and machinery costs associated with no-till farming relative to conventional tillage systems and other types of conservation tillage. Reduced erosion and runoff associated with no-till also lead to a number of environmental benefit...

Introduction Biomass energy has received much attention in recent years. We now use about one third of the U.S. corn crop for biofuels. More recently, attention has focused on cellulosic resources—dedicated energy crops like switchgrass, miscanthus, and corn stover. Now the question has been raised concerning the economics of collecting just the corn cobs for energy instead of the stover. This ...

Agricultural damage by wildlife is a major concern for both agricultural and wildlife agencies at the state and federal level. Our objective was to estimate wildlife damage to agricultural crops on a statewide basis. We sent questionnaires to 4,958 farmers and 1,003 were returned after 2 mailings. Twenty-five percent of farmers responding to our survey rated the level of wildlife damage to thei...